Wokingham Borough Council has defended its decision to increase parking charges due to drop in income – despite figures that show car park ticket sales have actually increased.

Conservative opposition councillor Keith Baker recently published figures showing more car park tickets were sold across the borough last year than at any time in the past 20 years. Yet the council says its income from parking tickets has fallen, while the cost of running car parks has risen.

The figures, which the Conservative group obtained from the council, show the authority sold some 1,290,370 parking tickets in the 2022/23 financial year.

That’s more than  200,000 up on the year before, and much higher than the 978,095 sold in 2019-20 – the last financial year before the first lockdown. It’s also the highest since 2005/06, when 1,219, 378 were sold.

The figures don’t include tickets from park and ride car parks, which have suffered from a decline in usage in the wake of the pandemic.

Councillor Baker questioned whether this meant the council’s claimed shortfall came mostly from park and ride services – and whether increases elsewhere were subsidising this.

He told Bracknell News: “The total number of tickets is highest since before 05/06. The logical conclusion to that is the normal off-street car parks are the ones doing well. More people are using them and buying tickets than they have for 20 years.”

READ MORE: Wokingham parking charges increase delayed until July

But councillor Paul Fishwick, responsible for car parks in Wokingham, pointed to changes such as the introduction of “free vend” tickets for users such as blue badge holders.

He said: “There have been some recent changes to how we charge in our car parks which mean that the increase has not resulted in a corresponding rise in income.

“We have introduced ‘free vend’ tickets, which mean that people who park for free still need a ticket. About 113,000 of these tickets are free vend tickets, meaning ten per cent of the total tickets ‘sold’ do not provide any income for our parking services.”

He added: “Also, travel patterns have changed since the Covid pandemic, resulting in an increase in short-stay parking and a decrease in long-stay parking, which accounts for a higher number of ticket sales.”

Councillor Fishwick also said that, with new car parks being opened and others expanded in recent years, it wasn’t possible to directly compare figures between years.

The rises are set to come into effect from Monday, 3 July. The new charges in Wokingham town car parks will start from £1.30 for up to an hour. The maximum will be £7 for over six hours.

Outside Wokingham town, daytime charges will start from £1 for up to an hour and rise to £7 for over six hours.